Employee Opera Software on trial for transferring production secrets in favor of Mozilla

Someone Trond Werner Hansen (Trond Werner Hansen), who positions himself as a designer and musician, was convicted of transferring a number of production secrets to the Mozilla Foundation. Apparently, Hansen was far from being the last person in a Norwegian company (he worked there intermittently from 1999 to 2010) - he was called responsible for the appearance of such decisions in the browser as tabs, mouse gestures, integrated search and speed dial panel (Speed ​​Dial). ), many of which later migrated to competitors and became, in fact, the standard in the industry.

Evidence in a lawsuit will be this video where Hansen talks about the Mozilla project, codenamed Junior (browser for iPad), on which he worked at the time in the foundation as a designer and programmer. It should be understood that as a “feature” Junior are called those over which Opera has already worked for a long time just with the participation of the figurant of the lawsuit - Hansen himself - who transferred to the Mozilla Foundation later.

The amount of the lawsuit is rather big and amounts to NOK 20 million or approximately $ 3.4 million. The Next Web reviewers managed to contact Hansen and he confirmed that a claim was really filed against him, and he had to return from America back to Norway ( apparently, he does what he wants for his own pleasure - he plans to release a music album and, perhaps, open an art gallery)

As often happens in such cases, Henson refused to comment on his problematic situation with Opera, but said that he had not done anything illegal. Opera’s lawyers, in turn, expressed themselves in the sense that Hansen, after leaving Opera Software, acted contrary to contractual obligations to the company and violated the statutory confidentiality obligations.
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